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Simon Mayo's Books Of The Year

David Baddiel

Simon Mayo's Books Of The Year

Ora Et Labora

Arts, Books, Fiction, Society & Culture

4.8 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Baddiel joins Simon and Matt for a chat about his new non-fiction book, 'My Family: The Memoir' He discusses his relationship with his mum and dad, some of the hilarious anecdotes from his childhood that appear in the book and the love that he has for both his parents, despite their quirks and faults. His family life growing up was complicated, and David doesn't shy away from telling the home truths of his upbringing. Simon and Matt also discuss David's brilliant new podcast, "A Muslim And A Jew Go There" which he co presents with Sayeeda Warsi. Here's some more gumf on the book: A searingly honest, funny and moving family memoir in which David Baddiel exposes his mother’s idiosyncratic sex life, and his father’s dementia, to the same affectionate scrutiny. On the surface, David Baddiel’s childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all. Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. David’s detailing of the affair – including a hilarious focus on how his mother turned their household over to golf memorabilia, and an eye-popping cache of her erotic writings – leads to the inescapable conclusion that Sarah Baddiel was a cross between Jack Niklaus and Erica Jong. Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family’s past, his father’s memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother’s affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive. My Family: The Memoir is David Baddiel’s candid examination of his childhood, family and memory offering a twisted love letter to his parents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode is brought to you by the Amazon Kindle Storyteller Award.

0:03.7

Have you written a book that you want to see published and be in with a chance of winning

0:07.8

20,000 pounds?

0:09.3

All you have to do is to publish your book via Kindle Direct Publishing by August 31st to enter this award.

0:16.0

The winner will receive a ÂŁ20,000 prize fund.

0:19.0

Joining the judging panel this year are broadcaster and author Sarah Cox and presenter author and

0:24.6

journalist Vic Hope. Now in its eighth year the literary prize celebrates the UK's

0:29.1

best self-published story championing and offering recognition for the nation's best independent writers.

0:35.2

So get out that book that you're keeping in a draw and get entering.

0:38.7

For more information on how to enter go to Amazon.co. UK forward slash story teller that's amazon

0:45.2

co at uk forward slash storyteller and good luck Hello and welcome to another Books of the Year. Another podcast from your very

1:06.0

good friends at Books of the Year, the podcast. Getting you prepped for the summer

1:10.3

I think that's what this podcast stands for right now because we are deep into schools

1:16.1

are breaking up beach ready.

1:17.1

Correct that we are beach ready and so books that you want to take on holiday with you so that's where we come in.

1:24.0

Because also you don't want to take a vast tome do you?

1:28.0

Because that's like all your baggage and it'll give you a bad back or

1:32.0

I suppose it's where candles come into.

1:34.1

Yeah Vast Tomes I think are full Christmas aren't they?

1:37.2

So it's like Boxing Day so I can get away from the family and I can sit on my own

1:42.0

in the conservatory and read and be dull.

1:45.0

Whereas you want lighter books for taken on holiday.

...

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